Dragon Dictation FREE for a limited time!

[makingdots]

iTunes Link


Review from TUAW

Dragon Dictation comes to the iPhone. Wow.
Put this into the 'I didn't think they could ever get this to work on an iPhone' category.

I'm talking about Dragon Dictation from Nuance, the developers of the very popular Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC. Nuance also provides the speech recognition engine for MacSpeech Dictate on the Mac platform.

To dictate on the iPhone you just launch the app, press the record button, and start talking. Your dictation can be a brief sentence, or a much longer treatise. Once the text has been created from your speech, it's possible to email it, send it as a text message, or put the result in your clipboard. After recording your message, you can edit the resulting text before you send it off for others to read.

It's pretty slick! When you record your message, it is quickly transmitted to Nuance servers where a speech recognition algorithm is run against your data. The resulting text is returned to your iPhone very quickly; my informal benchmarks showed that it took about a second for text to be processed on a Wi-Fi network, and less than 5 seconds over 3G. You'll need a data connection for the app to work, but having this speech-to-text capability is going to be very important to a lot of people, who will find all sorts of uses for it.

I tested the app for about a week and found the accuracy to be very good. Accuracy diminishes if you are in a very noisy environment, as I found when I tried some dictation while being driven down the interstate. There were a few errors, but they were easy to correct. To add punctuation to your text, you can say 'period', 'question mark', or 'new paragraph,' and Dragon Dictation adds the appropriate punctuation.

Since your dictation goes out over the internet for processing, I asked Nuance about security. Their reply was as follows:
"Search queries and dictation requests are transcribed by fully automated speech recognition software, without the use of humans. Data is uploaded and collected in order to improve performance for individual users, and to improve the general performance of the system.

All speech recognition requests and associated data are processed in data centers in the U.S. that meet stringent security and privacy standards; these are the same standards that we use for processing private information in other areas of our business."
How much will this capability cost? Nothing. For a limited time Dragon Dictation is absolutely free, but at some point there will be a charge for it. I spoke to Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager for Nuance Mobile, and he said they see all sorts of specialized applications of this technology, such as in the legal and medical professions. The app has gone live and is available now.

Review form Gizmodo

World's Most Popular Dictation Software Comes to App Store
There've been some dictation apps before now, but now Nuance, makers of Dragon, the world's most popular desktop dictation software, is invading the App Store with their own. Plus, it's free (for a limited time)!

Dragon Dictation (link opens iTunes), which is based on the desktop Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, lets you do pretty much everything you'd use the iPhone's keyboard for, but with your voice. That includes using the iPhone's clipboard for cutting and pasting, as well as saying your latest Twitter or Facebook update aloud (warning: Saying "Just ate a sandwich LOL roast beef LOL" aloud may frighten those around you). It's still pending approval at the moment, but should be out either very soon or something tomorrow, at which point it'll be free for a limited time. LOL!

[kcirecarg718]

Can't seem to find the app in my iPhone AppStore. Im using my US iTunes account.

EDIT: Found it already if your using your iPhone AppStore app search for Dictation and not Dragon

[jbf_777]

^i searched "dragon dicatation" using my iPhone's App Store and found it. :-)

downloaded it already. very nice application.

[dementia]

It says not available in the Philippines

[dakilang_waiter]

@dementia: You need a US iTunes account for this. You can just change your account details and make your location the US with any made up address (I think).

[mysterio]

@dementia: You need a US iTunes account for this. You can just change your account details and make your location the US with any made up address (I think).

You need to input an address with a corresponding ZIP code. They check for that. But otherwise, you can make it up.

[bottomsup624]

downloaded this promising app... hope it lives up to expectations... from my experience, it gets 70-80% of the dictation... maybe its the accent? what do you guys think?

[primo1]

Downloading it now...... Thanks for the heads up!

[xtc]

Goody! Downloading it now! Thanks!

[MacNotApple]

Thanks for the heads up!

BTW, does this really need an internet connection? Mmmm.